Trick or Treat
by L.M.Lewis
Summary: A little something to remember him by.


Disclaimer: These characters are not mine and I make no profit from them.

**Author's Note: **This is set one day after the end of "Once Again With Vigorish"—the first season episode, which was broadcast on October 30, 1983, in which the loan shark, Frank Kelly (a man who had long avoided conviction by making sure that all potential witnesses against him never testified) was finally trapped in a sting by the judge and Mark.

**Trick or Treat**

By L.M. Lewis

Early that Monday morning, Hardcastle had headed downtown for yet another conference with the DA in regards to additional charges against Kelly and his henchman, Jerry Blackmore. Mark had been excused from this one, which pleased him. He figured Pammy Peterson would be there, too, and he hadn't quite made his mind up about her. He thought maybe Hardcastle deserved a little comeuppance from his former law clerk, but he wasn't sure he'd deserved to be caught in the middle of her object lesson.

So he'd been glad to stay behind, even if that meant a morning of weeding, out among the roses—attractive and thorny, but at least roses were up front about it. He bent to his work, half hidden behind them and the hedges that bordered the garden.

That's where he was when he heard the engine. A van, that much registered even before he'd glanced up, something medium weight and in need of a tune-up. As soon as he lifted his head, his supposition was confirmed. Anyway, it was hours too soon for the judge to be back.

He frowned. The vehicle was a Volkswagen—blue and white and long in the tooth. There was only the driver visible and the details there were a little sketchy, a man, certainly—longish hair—but when his head turned, scanning the property, a mustache and scraggly beard were evident.

Mark didn't stand up. He'd only been at the estate for six weeks and he certainly couldn't claim to know the routine, but this guy wasn't familiar, and he didn't look like the type to be visiting the judge.

The man was climbing out of the now-stationary vehicle, still looking around and certainly not making any efforts at secrecy. Mark thought about Frank Kelly for a moment—the man's incessant efforts to silence every possible witness against him. Surely he wasn't going to pursue the same policy after kidnapping an assistant DA from a packed courtroom.

He shook his head at his brief lapse into paranoia and clambered up, brushing the dirt from his pants. A free-lance delivery guy, no doubt. He looked young, maybe twenty-five, olive-skinned but with the unhealthy pallor of someone who didn't get too much sun. He was on the verge of calling out to him but the man must have spotted him from the corner of his eye.

He turned, looking puzzled, and said, "Is this Judge Hardcastle's place?"

Mark nodded, a little more wary; there was a shoebox-sized box under the guy's right arm, but he didn't have a clipboard or a shipping manifest in his hand. _Paranoia, no question_. Mark chided himself as he came through a break in the hedge. He didn't completely close the distance between them, though, and he picked up a rake he'd leaned against the side of the garage, not that it would do much good against anything but another garden implement.

"Yeah," he finally said, "but he's not here right now. If it's a delivery, I can sign for it."

Oddly, he'd decided he could. Six weeks in residence at Gull's Way and he had already become Hardcastle's factotum: pool cleaning, auto maintenance, and taking down racketeering mob bosses—all in a day's work. He figured signing for packages was mere pro forma at this point.

"Oh," the man glanced down at the package and then up again, bemused, "he doesn't have to sign for it . . . but I was hoping to give it to him myself." He shifted it a little, handling it with some care.

Mark frowned, but he figured most guys delivering a bomb wouldn't want to hang around and do it in person.

"He won't be back for a while. If you want, you could leave a note with it—it's either that or come back later on."

The other man appeared to be pondering—everything he did seemed slightly in slow motion, with a gravity disproportionate to his years. Mark's threat assessment dropped another notch or two and he stepped closer.

"I could wait," the man said, with an air of hesitancy that almost made it sound as though he were asking himself the question—and weighing out the potential cost.

Mark was near enough now to take in the details: the used but slightly ill-fitting clothes, as though the outfit had been cobbled together from a charity bin, and the darkly scarred and knotted veins visible on the man's left forearm, where it extended from his rolled-up sleeve. The two tears—small but coarse tattoos near the outside corner of his right eye—were only confirmation.

"When did you get out?" Mark asked, trying to keep it casual. Drug-using ex-con gang members could be both quiet _and_ dangerous. It all depended on what they had or hadn't dosed up on recently.

This one stayed relatively placid. "Last week," he said, not taking any obvious affront.

"Two years?" Mark asked, with a nod toward the man's apparent history, as written on his face

"Seven," the visitor answered, and then, at Mark's lifted, questioning eyebrow, he drew back the sleeve further, to reveal a cluster of seven crudely tattooed tombstones just above his elbow and below that the number 187.

"The others," he tapped his right cheek knowingly—that's for my brothers . . . dead while I was away."

Mark frowned. "I never could keep all that stuff straight, but the number—" he hesitated.

The visitor shrugged. "It means what it means." He looked around once more. "You know what they say—'Blood in, blood out'—it's what you have to do to join."

Mark gave that one thoughtful nod—the penal code number for murder. "'Blood in'," he said, "yeah . . . but—"

"_Out_, too . . . I'm getting there." The man's eyes had taken on a look that was far off and yet intense.

Mark tensed. Unlike the admission requirements, he'd never heard that _leaving_ a gang cost anyone's blood but the departing member's, but it was possible, he supposed, that an exception might be made in an exchange for a truly spectacular assassination. Yet the man in front of him remained composed and not very specific in his threats.

_Of course not . . . Hardcase isn't here._ He looked up, suddenly aware of the passing of time, not sure when the old donkey was expected back, and suddenly not willing to have him return unaware of what was waiting here.

"You can leave the package; I'll see that he gets it," he hastily assured, eyeing that more warily, too, but willing to guess that it wouldn't be immediately dangerous. He could always leave it out on the patio.

The visitor looked down at the box still stuffed beneath his arm as if surprised to see it there. "No, no," he said in another half-voiced murmur. I said I'd give it to him myself. I will. I still can." He lifted his chin again. "Just tell him I was here."

"And you'll be back?" Mark asked, still wary, and then, with a little more insistence, "_When_?"

"_Dios quiere_,"the man muttered softly and then, as he turned and climbed back into the van, "_No quiero morir solo._"

"Wait," Mark reached towards him, suddenly even less willing to let the man out of his sight, but the visitor had already put the vehicle into gear and there was barely time to clear its path before it lurched forward, swung past the fountain, and was gone out of sight up the drive. Mark stood there, shivering in a sudden cool breeze up off the ocean, and repeating the license number to himself.

00000

"And that's all he said," Mark repeated into the receiver, all too aware of the reception his story was getting. "'God willing' and 'I don't want to die alone.' Now who do you suppose he wants to take with him?" he added sharply.

"_Well, if that's all he said, it hardly constitutes assault,_" Hardcastle drawled casually, "_and no name, huh?_" Then he grudged, "_But'cha did okay, getting the license number_." And with a sudden change in attitude he added, "_I'm headin' home. Maybe you should just stay in the house till I get there_."

"Hah, he had a fair shot at me. I'm just another ex-con; scratching my name off the books ain't gonna buy him any time with his enforcers. _You're_ the one who's worth points."

"_That's just your way of looking at things, McCormick. For all you know he dropped by to tell me he's turning over a new leaf._"

Mark didn't try to stifle his snort of disbelief. "You gave this guy seven years."

There was a breathy sigh from the other end of the line and then, "_Yeah, and I wish I could remember which one. '77 was a bumper year._ _I'll have Carlton run a cross-check on recent releases who went up for murder, see who looks familiar . . . stay in the house, will ya?_"

And then the receiver on the other end clicked down.

00000

Mark dutifully paced the den for a few minutes, then wandered back into the garden, this time keeping one eye cocked for intruders. That's where Hardcastle found him, on his arrival home about forty-five minutes later.

"Jorge Renato," Hardcastle said, limiting himself to a quick scowl of disapproval at Mark's failure to follow instructions.

"You sentenced him?"

That only got a shrug and a quick, "Of course. You didn't think he picked me out of a phone book, did'ja?"

"In the house," Mark said, with a push in the right direction. "You asked Carlton for an APB?"

The push didn't advance the man more than a few steps. He turned and nodded to the second question. "Gonna feel stupid if it turns out he was just paying a social call."

"To thank you for setting him on the right path?" Mark nudged again and shook his head. "You've been watching too many Mickey Rooney movies, Hardcase. Anyway, you'll feel stupider still if he comes back with a machete and catches you flat-footed."

"I thought you said it was a shoebox."

"Okay, a stiletto . . . or a hand grenade. There's lots of things smaller than a pair of shoes that you can kill somebody with." He'd herded the man nearly to the front door. "'Social calls'," he reached for the door and ushered the man in, "_honestly_." He stepped into the hallway and shut the door behind them, barely having time to latch it before the phone rang.

Hardcastle moved to answer it. Mark checked the lock and joined him in the den, listening to the one-sided conversation.

"How far north?" Hardcastle inquired, and then he grunted at the apparent answer. "You sure?"

The answer, whatever it was, didn't seem to please him. Another quick grunt and then he said, "We'll be here."

Mark was already leaning on the edge of the desk, a look of inquiry on his face as Hardcastle replaced the receiver. He got no immediate answers from the older man.

"They found him already?" Mark finally asked. He glanced down at his watch. "That's pretty fast work. 'Course I suppose he couldn't have gotten all that far before I called you, still—"

A sharp glance from the judge halted him in mid-comment. Hardcastle's expression held a note of puzzlement to it—not a look Mark had seen very often on the man's face.

"You called me right after he left?" the older man asked.

Mark pulled back a little and nodded. "Yeah. I came in, wrote the license down, and called—you'd left the DA's number on the desk . . . Why?"

"They were even faster than you think." Hardcastle was frowning down at the phone, as though it were partly responsible for the trouble. "Carlton says it only took this long for him to find out because the guys handling the accident report weren't taking radio calls—they didn't get the APB."

"What guys?" Mark said cautiously.

"The guys who found the van run off the PCH, Ventura County, about twenty miles north of here. The driver's dead. ID says Jorge Renato."

Mark thought about that one, then pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head again. "No, I called you right away. He couldn't have made that kind of time, not in a van like that."

"It gets better," Hardcastle said.

Mark held out one hand. It didn't ward off the additional commentary.

"The officers reconstructing the scene say someone tagged his bumper and pushed him through the guardrail."

"'Blood out'," Mark groaned, "that's what he said. "If he told them he wanted out of the gang, he was a dead man."

He didn't even look up to see if the judge was nodding.

"I swear, I called you right away."

"Sure you did," Hardcastle said quietly.

"Except nobody's gonna believe that, huh?" Mark looked up with a sudden new degree of concern in his voice. "After all, it's not possible for him to have been here, talking to me, and in that smashed up van at the same time, and if I'm lying about that, then they'll figure I'm lying for a reason, huh?"

"Cops tend to think that way, yeah."

"I swear I didn't leave the estate," Mark said solemn earnestness.

And then the doorbell rang.

A quick glance back through the half-shuttered front window revealed the officer standing there. Hardcastle stood and moved past the younger man, who was still leaning heavily against the desk with a look of anxious disbelief on his face. There was no hesitation as the judge worked the lock, and a smile of collegial welcome as the door finally opened.

"Judge Hardcastle?" the young man in uniform inquired politely from the front stoop.

The judge gave him a friendly nod. For all intents and purposes it appeared very natural, though somewhat at odds with the tense silence of the other man who had stepped into the hallway behind him.

"You got a call about the accident?" the officer asked. Another nod from Hardcastle. "If you have a minute, there's some questions."

"Certainly." The door was opened wider in casual invitation.

Now it became apparent that the Ventura County patrolman was carrying something. His hands were sheathed in latex gloves, the sort that evidence technicians wear. The box he was holding was no larger than loaf of bread.

"This was found in the vehicle. Do you recognize it?"

Hardcastle shook his head slightly but Mark stepped forward, looking at the thing with morbid curiosity and recognizing it beyond a doubt.

"It's the one," Mark said. "He had it. He said it was for you," he added, with a glance up at Hardcastle.

The officer reached to lift the lid and, at McCormick's look of trepidation, said, "It was open at the scene—on the front seat of the van. Kind of bizarre," he removed the lid as the other two men leaned forward to inspect the contents, "we wondered if you had any idea—"

"The Day of the Dead," Hardcastle said quietly, after only a moment looking down at the small skeletal figures—a whole scene, really—with the main one loosely dressed in black robes, clutching a miniature gavel in its bony hand. From its seat behind the high judicial bench it looked down grinningly on the figures below—skeletal lawyers and a skeletal defendant, wearing the colors of his gang and two small dots on his bony cheek. "A gift," the judge added stiffly. "It's art, you know, for the holiday."

The officer looked doubtful. "It doesn't seem threatening to you?"

Hardcastle lifted his gaze from the box. "'Threatening'?" he asked pensively. Then he finally shook his head. "Nah. You know how guys pick up hobbies in prison. This musta been his."

The Ventura County man studied the ensemble more closely, then looked up and past the judge toward McCormick. "You phoned in the information about the van," then he flicked his glance over to Hardcastle again, "and then you asked for an APB?"

"A misunderstanding," the judge assured him. "McCormick didn't know Jorge and didn't see what was in the box. He talked to him a bit, then the guy headed out. The kid here thought about it for a while and then decided better safe than sorry."

"How long a while?" the officer asked pointedly.

"A while," Mark said, not too convincingly.

"Long enough," Hardcastle said firmly. "And why the hell would he have called it in at all if he hadn't just been hanging around here and worrying about it?"

The judge's sudden sternness seemed to take the officer by surprise. He closed the lid on the box and stepped back with a conciliatory nod. He didn't even ask to see the front bumpers of the vehicles parked on the back drive.

"We might need to get in touch with you again," the officer said politely, barely clearing the door before Hardcastle gave him a sharp nod and closed it firmly.

Mark sagged with equal parts worry and relief, then a moment later he drew himself up again. "Hobbies, huh? You still think Jorge wasn't out to get you?"

Hardcastle shook his head. "It's folk art, not some kind of weird voodoo curse." Then his spirited defense faltered. "Well," he amended, "I think it's supposed to show that the dead are just like us—that death isn't something to be afraid of and that the folks we've known that died go on—as long as we remember them."

"He was coming here, to give you that . . . that _thing_." Mark frowned.

The judge voiced no objection to his choice of tenses. Mark plunged on, undaunted.

"He knew he was going to die—that they were going to kill him. 'Blood in, blood out.'"

"Maybe."

Mark frowned toward the diamond-paned glass of the front door, staring at the distorted, wavering figure of the departing officer. "And he figured, one way or the other, somebody ought to remember him."

"That's an awful lot of deduction from a couple of paper mache skeletons."

"He was here. I saw him. I called you right away," Mark added, with an insistence born of this new understanding. "And you believe me, _right_?"

Cornered by logic, the judge sighed. "There's gotta be some kinda _reasonable_ explanation . . . maybe your goofy watch stopped again or something."

Mark kept his face perfectly composed and his gaze unrelenting.

"Okay, well . . ." the judge faltered for a moment. "Yah, I suppose he mighta made a quick stop on the way to the Great Hereafter, just to make sure I'd get the delivery and remembered who sent it. Make more sense than you bumping off a guy for threatening me with a shoebox."

Mark's smile was slightly off-kilter. "And you gotta ask Carlton to get it back for you, the little skeleton guys . . . He meant for you to have them to remember him by."


End file.
